This exhibition features some 66 paintings by the Basque artist, several of which are displayed in public for the first time. Ranging in date from 1888, when Zuloaga was 18, to 1945, the works trace the artist’s development from his training in Paris to the mature work inspired by Spanish artists such as Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán, Goya and El Greco. The curators, Sofía Barrón y Carlos Alonso, focus on Zuloaga as both a landscapist and a portraitist. They showcase his representations of turn-of-the-century aristocracy, bourgeoisie and intellectuals, as well as his intimate portraits of family members. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and is organised in collaboration with the Museo Zuloaga in Pedraza (Segovia) and its president, the artist’s granddaughter, María Rosa Suárez Zuloaga.

Sorolla and Spirituality (until 2 September 2018)

This exhibition features the work Yo soy el pan de la vida, exhibited to the public for the first time since its recent restoration, the result of a collaboration with the owners of the work, the Lladró family. Curated by Felipe Garín, the exhibition explores the religious themes which the Valencian artist explored briefly in the earlier part of his career. It comprises six works produced between 1883 y 1899, including ¡Triste herencia!,Monja en oración,Santa Clotilde, Mesa petitoria, and La Virgen María, all on loan from major public collections.

What was the role of images in the religious experience of Castilian people of the 13th and 14th centuries? There is no clear answer, and the scarcity of written evidence has prompted much problematic speculation. However, on the basis of the images themselves and of relevant literary sources, including the well-known Cantigas de Santa María and works by 14th-century authors such as Juan Ruiz and Juan Manuel, it is possible to explore a number of key issues. The talk will be divided into three sections. One focuses on the 13thcentury: ‘Active images: the Cantigas de Santa María and their aftermath’. Another looks to the 14th century: ‘Passive images: the reception and dissemination of the Crucifixus dolorosus in Castile’. And it concludes by looking ‘beyond’ Art History. In the 1960s a Spanish politician coined the (in)famous tourist slog, ‘Spain is different’. His aim was to encourage foreigners to visit Spain, but the slogan is representative of a commonplace that has been repeated time and again since the Romantic era. Ultimately, my talk offers an invitation to reconsider whether Castilian and Spanish devotional practices are really so very different from those recorded elsewhere in medieval western Europe.

Fernando Gutiérrez Baños is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History of the University of Valladolid (Spain). He has been Frances A. Yates Short-Term Research Fellow at London’s Warburg Institute (2006) and Visiting Fellow at Princeton’s Index of Christian Art (2013). He specialises in art of the 13th and 14th centuries, focusing mainly on painting and art patronage. He is currently developing a research project on Castilian tabernacle-altarpieces of the Late Middle Ages, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and by the European Union through the ERDF (reference HAR2017-82949-P).

This is the second lecture in the Coll & Cortes Medieval Spain Seminar Series 2018-20, focused on images and devotion in late medieval Spain.